The fastening element serves in particular to attach a lining part, for example a door lining, to a carrier which in turn is fitted to a vehicle-fixed component, such as, e.g., a vehicle body part.
Some lining parts require to be removable. To this end, use may be made of snap-in fastening elements which are released from the carrier as soon as a holding force, specified by design, is exceeded. The advantage of such fastening elements is that they allow the lining part to be removed with little effort. The drawback resides in that they provide only a comparatively small holding force which may possibly be exceeded unintentionally in operation, which then results in the lining part being inadvertently detached from the carrier.
Also already disclosed in the prior art are fastening elements which can not readily be pulled off from their carrier, but require additional steps when it is intended to release the fastening elements from the carrier.
DE 198 54 293 A1, for example, discloses a trim strip fastening for motor vehicles, having a fastening clip which can be inserted into an opening of a metal sheet or the like by means of a base part and can be located there by an expanding pin that can be driven into a central borehole of the fastening clip. The fastening clip includes a supporting plate and, spaced therefrom, a head piece around which the trim strip at least partly engages. The head pace is provided with a cut-out protruding as far as to the expanding pin, and the expanding pin has a slot-like recess disposed thereon, so that a removal of the expanding pin contrary to the insertion direction is allowed by means of an auxiliary tool.
However, use of an expanding pin is awkward and increases the number of parts to be assembled.
It is the object of the present invention to further develop a fastening element for fastening lining parts, a carrier for a fastening element, and a tool for removing a fastening element of the kind initially mentioned in an advantageous manner, in particular to the effect that a fastening element for fastening lining parts is structured more simply than was the case so far.